Why Does Some Coffee Taste Sweet?
Black coffee is bitter? That's a thing of the past. Today's boutique coffee drinkers and consumers are looking for sweetness directly in black coffee, and we're not talking about sugar or honey. We're talking about the natural, pure sweetness in black coffee. Is this possible?
But why is coffee sweet? Can sweetness be maximized through roasting and brewing?
What Is Sweetness
Sweetness is generally associated with the high sugar content of the food itself. Sweet substances are most often found in carbohydrates, which include sucrose (usually granulated sugar) and lactose (milk).
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Sweetness provides the greatest stimulation to the taste buds of the tongue (as opposed to salty, sour, or bitter). However, it is through the balance and roundness that we can feel the deliciousness of the food due to the subtle sweetness.
In other words, sweetness is not only important to those of us with a sweet tooth, but it is also an element of balance for the palate.
Why Do We Love Sweets And Sweet Drinks?
Humans and many animals have a sweet teeth. Sweet foods give us energy, just as the taste of bitterness warns us that the food is poisonous. Humans are much more sensitive to bitter reactions than sweet ones, which allows us to stay alive while eating.
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Most of us remember the bitter taste we got when our parents gave us our first cup of coffee or beer when we were teenagers. As time progresses, we get used to the bitter taste. "Time" is a keyword.
Sweetness is probably a natural reaction, babies enjoy the lactose in breast milk, and lovers give each other candy and chocolate as gifts.
What Types Of Sugars Are In Coffee?
The carbohydrates in raw coffee beans, which make up 50% of the total weight of coffee, include sucrose, fructose, mannose, glucose, galactose, rhamnose, xylose, and other sugars found in nature. Of course, not all of these sugars are water-soluble, and only some of them will be boiled into the coffee you drink.
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The amount of sugar in coffee is also related to the variety, tree species, and processing. For example, Arabica coffee contains almost twice as much sugar as Robusta coffee, which is one of the reasons why Arabica has better quality. Bourbon coffee is generally considered to be sweeter than Catimor coffee.
The slower the fruit ripens (e.g., it may be grown at a higher altitude), the higher the sugar content will be, and honey-treated coffee may be sweeter than washed coffee.
Why Are Some Coffees Not Sweet?
Despite this, most mature, healthy, and unblemished Arabica beans are graded in terms of sweetness. When there is a lack of sweetness, it is usually categorized as something like immaturity or a flaw in the processing. The Cup of Excellence cupping form states, "The perception of sweetness is a direct reflection of the balance of ripening of the coffee fruit at harvest.
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If the coffee doesn't taste sweet, does that mean it's unripe or defective? Not necessarily. Roasting and brewing also affect the sweetness and bitterness of coffee, and each person's taste buds feel the intensity differently.
Roasting For Sweetness
Sugar plays an important role in roasting, especially in the Menard reaction (caramelization reaction), a chemical reaction that begins at the beginning of roasting when amino acids act as catalysts for reducing sugars, leading to a complex non-enzymatic saccharification process.
Chemical terminology giving you a headache? Don't worry, so does the author. In layman's terms, the baking process produces over 600 organic compounds and black extracts, as well as complex browning products.
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When baked to a burst, sugars, especially sucrose, caramelize. Interestingly, as the baking time increases, the sugars disintegrate to form complex and bitter caramel compounds. Yes, bitter-sweetness is not just a metaphor.
Brewing For Sweetness
Assuming you have roasted your coffee for sweetness, the next step is to brew it for sweetness. This is not an easy task, finding the sweet spot in the coffee is very difficult.
Why is sweetness so hard to get out of? As the coffee goes from under-extracted to over-extracted, the coffee becomes sweeter and sweeter like adding sugar, but the coffee soon becomes dry and bitter. When the coffee is at its best, this instant sweetness is what we are looking for, but it is easy to get it wrong.
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Brewing for sweetness means that you have to carefully adjust the brewing parameters and control all the brewing variables to ensure the same effect every time you brew, and remember that the longer the coffee is roasted, the more you need to adjust the brewing parameters.
If black coffee can be very sweet, why would anyone want to drink it with sugar?
Many people find coffee bitter, even without adding a spoonful or two of sugar. Some consumers may be drinking low quality Robusta recipe beans that are roasted to a deep roast, and such beans will cover most of the sweetness, but of course, it may also be related to dietary habits.
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Professional coffee people are often frustrated by consumers' habit of adding sugar to their coffee, which can override or even replace the original flavor of the coffee, which is carefully processed, roasted, and brewed.
But we must understand our customers' thoughts. As coffee professionals, we look for the sweetest flavor of coffee because we know that it is what makes people happy. And aren't our customers doing the same thing? The only difference is that the people who add sugar to their coffee can't taste the original sweetness of the coffee as we can, and that's one of the reasons why.
How Do I Train My Sweet Tastebuds?
Modern foods are full of sugar, which reduces most people's sensitivity to sweetness. A 355 ml bottle of Coke has about 39 grams of sugar, which is more than 9 teaspoons of sugar. Imagine how you would feel if someone ordered a latte and added nine teaspoons of sugar to it.
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Ironically, to taste foods that are sweet in nature, such as coffee, fruit, milk, etc., you must reduce your sugar intake, especially if you add sugar to them.
There is a small experiment that can help you taste sweetness in foods without added sugar, which is called "releasing repressed taste" by Danish sensory scientist Ida Steen.
Prepare a glass of orange juice and a glass of lemon juice. First, taste the orange juice. Feel its acidity and mild sweetness. Next, taste the lemon juice. It is not too pleasant and you may tremble when tasting it, but it is a good training for the senses.
A well-blended cup of coffee can clearly taste the sweetness that comes from the body, and we must learn by listening more; more appropriately, we must taste more to explore the wonders of coffee.
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